Category Archives: Uncategorized

On Afghanistan, Obama Resonates within the HispanicLatino Community

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There was something unusual about President Obama last night when he spoke from Bagram military base in Afghanistan.  His tone of voice seemed to capture the nation’s weariness of war without his own voice sounding listless.  There was no bluster, no nonsense.  Matter-of-fact, he sounded presidential.  He did not rush to useless rhetorical heights.  All of this should have resonated well within the HispanicLatino community, whose contributions to the Bush wars are well documented.

Obama embodied part of the common sentiment expressed to me by a family member a year ago.  “We need to get out.  We have done all we can.  It will not work in the end, but no one has given it a better shot.”  Indeed, the casualties within the country and within the HispanicLatino community will last for decades and entire lifetimes.  It really is time to come home.  It is hard to believe that we have spent more than $3 trillion in those wars and will spend trillions more to take care of the wounded and the families of the dead.

The message Obama delivered was a powerful as the one that went unstated:  Get out, close that checkbook, open up another course at home.  The hope is that the discredited neoconservatives, the ones who sat back while others fought and the habitual warriors who plunged America into these meaningless wars, get the message for all time.

Somewhere in his voice lay the possible reaction of a country were it ever attacked – God forbid – again as in September of 2011.  Only the most ridiculous people would argue for some sort of land invasion – of what?  More probably, we would step up what we are doing now: Keeping the pressure up and waiting for generational change to come in the Islamist world.  Nations can change within a generation.  Some can climb; others decline.  Perhaps that is the reason for a longer commitment than most Americans want now.

 

Our Size Does Matter

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A cousin forwarded me what I thought was one of those ridiculous internet chain letters.  Instead of blogospheric claptrap, the letter contained a brilliant, graphic description of how almost insignificantly small the earth is compared to other stars and planets in the universe.  The earth’s sun – that thing we see every day that we might not realize is one million times the size of earth – is not even a pencil dot next to the massive supergiant, Antares.

“Humbling, isn’t it,” the letter smugly asks.  Ah, no.  Not humbling at all.  Quite the opposite:  It is exhilarating!  Despite our dinky size, we are alive compared to what we know – so far – of the rest of the universe, which appears to be generally a large empty, chilly, gaseous mass.

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Harry Pachon, Hero

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When any individual dies, the temptation is always to make him or her larger than they were.  In my life I have known few hard heroes, those willing to put their lives, careers and perhaps their families on the line.  Most of the heroes in our lives fall within the context of our parents or other members of our families.  Sometimes we actually have the privilege of witnessing an exceptionally saintly priest or a teacher or a friend going the full distance of commitment to their fellow human beings.

There is another category of hero just as important.  I call them soft heroes.  They surely were hard heroes to others.  But soft heroes to me are those men and women whom I have known personally in my life but whose work I have known better than I have known them, and who grow over time.  These are individuals who have done much for many millions of people whom they will never know in ways that seem to be commonplace and less dramatic than grandstanding in front of a bank of cameras.  I call them soft heroes because the battles they fight are often seen as being on paper.  Of course, paper has won many battles in the history of humankind.

Harry Pachon, who died Friday in Los Angeles, was one of those soft heroes in my life.  Harry won many battles on behalf of the HispanicLatino community and on behalf of decency itself through his work, and the organizations that he had a hand of forming and supporting through the years will keep on winning many battles for many years to come.

I met Harry scores of years ago and would run across him in the various cities across the country in which I have lived and worked.  He was slightly older than me.  Ordinarily one of two men in generally the same age bracket seldom becomes an automatic acolyte to the other.  But with Harry, I immediately and gladly took the second seat.

In conversation, Harry was both listener and teacher and long before it was fashionable, he indeed saw synergy in so many different experiences in the HispanicLatino community.  And he helped others foresee the possibilities for their lives and worked to make them real, tangible — and hard.

The temptation to oversize Harry upon the news of his death is an easy one to give into – but in this case it is wholly merited.  For me, Harry was exceptional.  For the rest of the HispanicLatino community and for the country itself, Harry is monumental.

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Of Course, the Logo

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So the first reactions to the website which went live Wednesday evening was to the logo.  Some readers got the idea immediately: A series of opaque, still-forming rings come in from the left into view with another series of undefined rings looming in the shadows at the far right – larger still and expanding – both representing a population coming together in a colorful ring to embody a people still in the making within one experience that is both Hispanic and Latino.

The design is the product of the kind of creative HispanicLatino on whom the future depends, Marcos Dominguez, whom I have yet to meet but who over the phone in Indianapolis, Indiana, understood at once what I was trying to convey: The potential of the HispanicLatino population and its still-emerging sense of self.

Ultimately, the colorful HispanicLatino ring-logo is about a point in time, a moment in history.  The blank space in the backdrop between each set of rings constitutes the country in a geographic sense but, more so, the slate upon which HispanicLatinos will write their story.

Marco’s design wonderfully includes everyone and excludes no one.  Its dynamic feel resonates with the possibilities of the future, both the good and the bad, for our time on earth is one of many lifelines of individuals in pursuit of their complete being, seeking to close the circle within themselves and within their personal, sometimes chaotic lifetimes.

The colors are intentionally optimistic.  The HispanicLatino population – however it decides to proceed into the future – possesses the resources, creativity and faith to succeed and to help the country survive in a more globalized world that itself emanates from the logo.